In recent years vehicles have become more and more equipped with electronic systems and devices which aim to assist drivers. In these systems enhancing driving comfort is not the only motivation, however, since they are also able to substantially contribute to driving safety. Such electronic systems include, for example, cellular communication devices (mobile phones), navigation systems (including satellite-based positioning systems), and the like, and have already become integrated with traffic alert or road condition warning systems, such to provide the driver with warnings or indications toward deviations in case of traffic jams, road blocks, bad weather conditions, or other related factors.
Besides these integrated systems that rely at least to some extent on services that provide respective warning information (i.e. services who actually determine whether specific road or traffic conditions render necessary the generation and the broadcast of respective warnings), there also exist warning systems that are more or less completely independent from any service providers. These systems include so-called intersection assistants that are based on an ad-hoc communication amongst the involved vehicles, i.e. local radio signal transmission and reception, and which provide some assistance in several driving situations. These system recently also include radar-based systems that determine speed and distance of surrounding vehicles in order to be able to detect, for example, a likelihood of a rear-end collision with another vehicle going in front.
However, such car communication is dominated by the so-called ad-hoc and local communication (e.g. standardized in 802.11p), wherein information is exchanged directly between vehicles by using local broadcasts, multi-hoc communication and geo-routing mechanisms. Unfortunately, such systems may require installation of additional hardware on the vehicles and/or on the road infrastructure, such as additional antennas and detectors, and also additional user interfaces for interacting with the driver. This racy, in turn, also require installation of additional display and/or control elements, which are generally undesirable in the case of vehicle interiors, since space is limited and drivers' distraction should not exceed some acceptable level.
Moreover, such systems may also suffer from a reduced reliability in that locally generated, transmitted, and received radio signals may be prone to shadowing effects caused by buildings or other vehicles, or may be subject to limited communication range and/or equipment rate of the employed modules. In this way, it may be rendered difficult or even impossible to provide involved surrounding vehicles with warning information because other vehicles and/or the given local environment prevents penetrating of the necessary detection and/or notification signals.
At the same time, however, there are broadly available the so-called cellular telecommunications networks, such as GSM, PCS, UMTS, CDMA, network, and the like. These cellular telecommunications networks, including their respective infrastructure as well as mobile consumer equipment, are ubiquitous in many places, so that they are principally suitable for implementing vehicle assistant services.